33 replies to this topic

[Dez Reaver]

Some nice stories here, fun to read.

As a kid, I used to spend a lot of my holidays at my aunts place, in a small town, away from other family and friends. So it was just TV, walks, talks and books for entertainment. Good times though. So one day, somewhere in 1995-96 I believe (I was 7-8) I went to the local bookstore and found a BattleTech book there. This one: http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Ideal_War I was attracted by the cover of course Bought it, read it. Can't comment much on the story and politics, wasn't my main focus at that age, but everything this book had on the mechs, battles, and mech drawings at the end had me hooked. Spent the rest of the holidays drawing my own mechs.
Later I got to play the Sega Battletech game for a bit. Disliked it completely at that time.
Few years after, finally got my own PC and tried original MW4 and Mercs. Loved it and played it oh so often.
Decided to read some more books a few days ago. Currently on Gray Death Legion trilogy. So far so good

[Captain Polux]

My first exposure was seeing an add for the snes game. The first tangible moment was getting the Tyco toys.
I still feel the same excitement seeing those mechs today as I did back then. The idea of piloting giant machines is just ******* awesome.

[Commander A9]

I was first exposed to Battletech in 1994 with the TV show. I was 9 years old.

I was so intrigued. I bought all the mech toys. I started drawing Mad Cats. I memorized dialogue. I bought the Battletech: A Game of Armored Combat for the original Sega Genesis. When I got my first computer in 1997, it came with Battletech: The Crescent Hawk's Inception/Revenge and Mechwarrior 1.

It was a good start and it's what led to me being here.

[Steinar Bergstol]

Mid 80's. Tiny hole-in-the-wall games and comics store in Oslo, Norway, called Spillspesialisten (The Games Specialist). Shelves and product stacked so close together the place was definitely a firehazard. Saw this box of a game with an awesome mech with to huge gun arms (which I wouldcome to learn was a Warhammer) on the cover. Looked on the back and saw more cool mechs fighting eachother. Said to myself, "Self, you must make this thing of gloriousness yours!" And so Battletech 2nd edition (the one which replaced the original "Battledroids" box after George Lucas' lawyers glared in the general direction of FASA for the use of the word "droid") became the first proper gamer-type game I bought with my own money. Prior to that all I'd played were the old standards everyone plays as kids, like Monopoly and the like.

[James The Fox Dixon]

I got into Battletech back in 1984 when the second edition came out. I remember buying two of the boxed sets just for the minis alone. I played steadily up until the clans were introduced and being royally let down by what the SLDF became. I was a die hard Eridani Light Horse fan and to see my beloved SLDF be turned into Marxists killed the game for me. I'd play games over the years, but it was always 3025-3045 and without the clans.

I played the MW rpg when it came out and had some good runs in that. I've played every iteration of the PC MW, except for EGA MPBT. We didn't have internet out in the country where I lived and I didn't have a computer to run it. I did play MPBT Solaris when it was first on Kesmai then on AOL then back on Kesmai. I ran one of the best merc units that Davion intentionally poached all my players and their leader had his wife ban me from AOL when it was playing on there. It broke my heart to see what one person can do to another and to take all the hard work you and your friends put into producing the best pilots in the game. Over the years, I take it as a compliment that a house destroyed my beloved 51st Eridani Light Horse Regiment all because the training program we developed was the best in the game.

I started playing this back when it was in closed beta. I couldn't afford to get a founder's pack, but I would have. I love the game even today after being homeless and away from it for 4 years. I'm just glad it's still going.

[Tarogato]

My memories are from playing MW2 and oogling at the info in the holoprojector. The old art they had in them got my little kid nerd juices flowing.




And the lore blurbs was just all 'round good stuff.


Funny I don't think I ever got past the first few missions in each campaign because I was a nine-year-old with a joystick and I didn't even know you could group weapons. I just liked to look at the missile cam and toggle the vision modes and I didn't like ballistics because they didn't have pleasing visual effects (even though I found out later in life that ballistics were outrageously OP in that game, lol) and I spent a lot of time just exploring the maps and climbing tall things.

[LazerTag]

My first thought when introduced to TT was, "This should be cool". My second after reading the 3025 technical readout was, "The inventors are totally clueless about weapon weights, ranges, and how missiles work".

Although I enjoy the game immensely, that thought still echoes in my head.

[Tordin]

Alot of interesting stories folks, thanks for sharing with me and others

[MustrumRidcully]

I don't really remember what my first thoughts were. I don't even know exactly what my first exposure to Battletech was.

I know my first experiences with BT were these things
Crescent Hawk's Inception
Crescent Hawk's Revenge
Mechwarrior (1)
A Battletech game together with two cousins at my grandparents house for one of the big family meetings.

I don't think I could really follow the plot, especially because the games were all in English and I was a beginner in that language. (It were always my involvement with games that drove my English learning, I think. Later, when they became easily available through the internet, it was also movies and TV shows I could - or had to - watch in English).

I didn't quite know who Kurita was, but apparently they were the evil guys in Crescent Hawk's Inception.
With mechwarrior, I eventually learned that there was actually a plot to follow and certain tasks I had to do. Considering my poor grasp of what was said in the dialogs and the deadliness of following the storyline, it was rather hard to really follow it all.
I loved destroying the enemy assault lance with a Locust going for the enemy legs. But this only worked for single missions, the longer campaigns with multiple missions in succession wouldn't work since your mech wouldn't be patched up between fights. The contract system was cool.

Later I played Mechwarrior 3 (a ton of that) and Mechwarrior 4. I did play some Mech Commander game when it was released open source. Mechwarrior 3 is still one of my favorite game memories. I loved the cool briefings before the missions and the whole aspect of salvaging enemy mechs and materials. I also preferred its graphics over MW4. Technically, it used simpler textures and the like, but this meant that things didn't appear as pixelated as in MW4.

[jss78]

I kind of drifted into BT. I was a tabletop gamer starting in the late 80s, but mainly red-box D&D, later lots of Games Workshop miniatures stuff.

Hanging around game stores I'd browse through lots of stuff -- and BattleTech kind of caught my attention.

Not per se the giant robots, but the interesting-looking, kind of gritty and realistic presentation they gave to them. It was interesting to me how they'd combine the futuristic and kind of cartoon-derived machines with all those adult themes (at least they impressed me as such when I was 10-15).

Later on I picked up the 2nd ed boxed set and some Ral Partha "unseen" minis.

It was a Finnish translation (I live in Finland) which was produced in around tabletop BT's heyday in about 1990. I still have the boxed set in my bookshelf. (Hilariously the Finnish translators translated the tagline "Game of Armored Combat" as "Game of Giant Robot Combat", literally using the word "robot". So guess it's canon now, eh? )

Spoiler

I played for a bit, but kind of drifted off, mainly because my gaming buddies were more RPG type of people.

I was only an occasional PC gamer through the later years, and actually missed all the earlier MW games. The only BT-related computer/video game I ever played was a thing called MechForce on the Amiga.

Spoiler

So I got back with MWO, and basically emerged from this weird time capsule where I only really new the original unseen 'mechs. I first learned that clans are now a thing when I installed MWO in 2015. My first game was in a trial Kit Fox Prime which all these weird weapons I had never heard of.

[ocular tb]

jss78, on 08 July 2017 - 09:47 AM, said:

So I got back with MWO, and basically emerged from this weird time capsule where I only really new the original unseen 'mechs. I first learned that clans are now a thing when I installed MWO in 2015. My first game was in a trial Kit Fox Prime which all these weird weapons I had never heard of.

When I came here (before the Clan invasion) it was having only played MW2 a lot so I was used to nothing but clan mechs. As I was looking through the mechs available I kept thinking "Where's the Timber Wolf and Marauder!?" and "How come I can't put weapons where I want them!?". I didn't recognize any of these mechs except the Jenner. But after spending lots of time playing I've come to appreciate the IS mechs more. They just seem to have more unique personalities and character to me. And that to me makes them more memorable.

Edited by ocular tb, 12 July 2017 - 04:47 AM.

[MechaBattler]

I remember seeing Battletech novels at a library. But being too young to have the patience to read them. I loved the cover art though. And then later I saw the cartoon series they did. As a kid I enjoyed it. But I didn't know that it was a table top game. Even if I had. Too broke growing up to afford it.

My first MechWarrior game was MechWarrior 2 on Playstation. Got it as part of a buy 2 get 2 free deal they had at Fry's Electronics. They actually mailed the other games to you. I choose MW2 because I always loved knights, robots, and mechs.

[HGAK47]

I just remember playing Mechwarrior 2 for the first time on a PC that had the GPU to handle it not too long after playing the Mechwarrior 2 demo on a total potato pc, oh man it was so good running at "30 FPS" oh yes!. Looking back now it looks terrible but hey a decade or two can do that. Honestly forgot about the whole I.P until this game came out in beta. After trying it I was like yes this is going to be fun.

Little did I know it would be the start of a love/hate relationship.

Edited by HGAK47, 13 July 2017 - 05:26 AM.

[Thorgar Wulfson]

I was at a friends house playing Battletech for the first time, we had just set up 4 of the hex grid maps and had begun setting up the little cardboard painted reps of the mechs. I thought "these would be badass with miniatures", had to wait a year or more before the first ones were made lol. That was a loooong time ago.

Edited by Thorgar Wulfson, 13 July 2017 - 05:34 PM.